Ep. #518: Pete Buttigieg, Michael Eric Dyson

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

We had

very

tough day, tough week.

Anything I get out of you is gravy at this point.

I appreciate it all.

The good news is the impeachment trial is almost over.

The bad news is so is rule of law in America.

That's the little.

What other conclusion can we draw except that when you saw Alan Dershowitz, the president's chief lawyer there at the trial, say that any action taken by this president to help his re-election is by definition in the public interest.

When did we decide that?

I can commit any crime if it's good for me because then it's good for America?

This is like saying you can't arrest a car thief if he thinks you should be walking more.

Alan Dershowitz, I tell you.

What happens to these people?

So many of Alan Dershowitz used to be normal.

He came up with this idea when he was on on Jeffrey Epstein's plane,

which he was a lot.

He was getting a massage from, I'm sure, a completely age-appropriate young lady in his underwear.

And

he ran it by her, this theory, and she said, please don't make my job disgusting.

There was a glimmer of hope, you watching last night, that at least we would get witnesses, but no.

It hinged on Lamar Alexander, 79-year-old retiring senator from Tennessee, still not enough cover.

He said he made the decision after wrestling with his conscience and pinning it to the mat.

Alexander said, yeah, he agreed.

Trump did it.

He did all of it.

But senators have taken an oath to protect Donald Trump, and that's just the way the Constitution is written.

So it's a done deal.

This is going to happen.

Trump will be acquitted on Wednesday.

Republicans have nothing left to do but dot the I's and cross the T's and fuck the U's.

And

as always, with Trump, nothing will happen to him.

He said bigger slaps on the wrist from Melania.

And in the future, when Trump shoots somebody on Fifth Avenue, Mitch McConnell will be there to lick the blood off his shoes.

So we are

officially living in a dictatorship, and not even one with good rail service.

In happier news, the coronavirus is spreading.

No, China's in bad shape.

They have locked down many cities.

Trump has offered to send assistance to China, but well,

hold on.

First, a little matter of digging up some dirt on the Bidens, please.

You know, because, all right.

And

interesting, Biden and Bernie, neck and neck now in Iowa and nationally.

It is turning into a two-geezer race.

Today Biden said, victory is so close I could almost smell its hair.

I said this amazing, the two oldest guys, and what do the Democrats need more than anything, the young.

Democrats needing, the leading candidate for the party that needs the young has Malarkey written on his bus.

I'll tell you, Democrats are so desperate to engage the social media generation that the ballot in Iowa does not list the candidates' names.

It says, which Democratic candidate are you?

Keep thinking about it.

It'll work for you.

It'll work for you.

So I think Bernie and Biden should run together.

They'd be like the two Muppets in the balcony.

All right, we got a great show.

Rick Wilson, Mitch Landrew, and Representative Mikey Sorrell are here.

And a little later, I'll be speaking with our longtime friend, certainly my friend, Michael Eric Dyson, is backstage.

But

first up, he is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

Pete Budig is here.

Thank you.

Hey there, Mayor Pete.

How you doing?

I know you have to run because you've got to get, you're in Iowa.

You got to campaign stop very soon, right?

That's right.

We're in Davenport right now.

The snow is flying, but it feels good here on the ground.

Okay, so I'll get right to the questions.

First of all, I was ending there with some commentary about Bernie and Biden, who seemed to be now neck and neck at the head of the pack as the youngest guy in the campaign.

What do you think about that, that this party that's so young looking is embracing the two oldest people?

Well, I suppose you could run and succeed at any age, but I think the really important thing is are we focusing on the future or are we tied up in the politics of the past?

And I think at a moment like this, in order to govern, but also in order to win, we got to be focused on the future.

Definitely in order to govern because we're dealing with cybersecurity threats, global health risks, the economy changing in the era of technology, but also in order to win the election.

Most of the folks I talk to mainly just want to be sure we beat Donald Trump.

And if you think about it for a minute, every single time that my party has captured the White House in the last 50 years, it's been with a candidate who is looking to the future, new to national politics, and opening the door to a new generation.

I think that was a very clever answer, Mayor Pete, mentioning all those things old people don't understand.

And that's,

and I got to say, that's why I like you.

You're good.

I must tell you, you were on the show about a, I don't know, less than a year ago, but at the time, very few of us had heard of you or could pronounce your name.

And of course, we still can't.

So we call you Mayor Pete.

But i become a big fan of multiple choice you don't have to spell it or pronounce it you just got to be able to pick me off a list or stand in the right corner for the caucus well but for me just as a voter age is not an issue anymore when i just heard about you i didn't hear you it kind of was but i think you're a lot more mature than some of these people

So I mean, age is a case-by-case basis.

And also, I think what I like about you is I don't think you'll have to change your answers like some of the candidates for the general election.

That's right.

I mean, look, part of how we're going to win is to pull in a broad coalition.

And there are a lot of what I like to call future former Republicans who are showing up at my events.

We've been campaigning in some counties in Iowa here.

They've swung maybe 20 points toward Donald Trump, and yet folks are coming out of the woodwork to my events.

And I'm not trying to trick them.

I'm not pretending to be a conservative, but I'm making sure that we have a vision that a good, healthy majority of Americans can get on board with.

And that's not just true in terms of policy, it's true in terms of tone and style and just the kind of president that I think we want right now.

You know, a president you could turn on the news and see and feel your blood pressure actually go down instead of up through the roof.

That's, I think, a desire that crosses party lines.

It's not something I'll have to change up for the general election.

Right.

I mean, a month or two ago, it looked like

for the far left, and let's be clear, you're a progressive.

There's not a Democrat in this race who isn't an honest progressive.

Some are just very far left, and that would be Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, and he seems to have eclipsed her now.

And I think that's because Bernie don't care about that woke stuff.

You know?

Bernie's just straight up about the economy.

And I think that's what people care about.

Would you assess it similarly?

Well, I think that racial and economic inequality and justice go together.

What we've got to do is make sure that we're pointing to all the patterns of exclusion that need to change.

And when I talk about building a culture of belonging for the country, it's making sure that people can thrive regardless of where they come from, regardless of their race, and that you can thrive wherever you sit in the economy.

I mean, again, right now we're in eastern Iowa in cities that are a lot like South Bend.

And yeah, you know, you got a president who said he cares about the forgotten men and women and industrial workers, but you look at all of the economic policies they've had and they're benefiting corporations, they're benefiting the wealthy.

They're not doing anything for workers, for farmers.

People can tell, and that is increasingly something that's not just important to progressive and died in the wool Democrats, but really mattering to independents and an awful lot of people getting ready to cross party lines.

Okay, well, when I said woke, I meant a broad range of issues.

But as long as you mention this, I just want to say, and again, you don't have to comment on this, but just again, as a voter to the media, I would say one story I'm really tired of is Pete is not connecting with black voters.

Yes, I heard that story many, many times.

Get it.

And can we move on?

And, you know, I worry it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Do you?

Well, that's why it's so important to do well here on the ground.

You know, the strongest support that I have among black voters is among the folks who know me best.

In South Bend, where most of the black elected officials who've made endorsements are supporting me.

And on the ground in Iowa, we're seeing a lot of support.

But look, the reality is

that colours have every reason to be...

Absolutely.

I mean, look,

not in the numbers you see in the South, but no, absolutely.

Their experience matters and it counts.

And look, this is really important, right?

I mean, nobody is experiencing more of the pain.

of living under the Trump presidency than communities of color.

And that is one of the reasons there's such an emphasis on making sure that we win.

And the process of proving that for all of us begins right here in Iowa.

And this is the chance, starting in three days with the caucuses, to demonstrate that I've got the kind of campaign organization to succeed and go on and beat Donald Trump.

Okay, so I very often hear use the phrase patriotic immunity, meaning Republicans seem to be able to get away with doing things that are unpatriotic and it doesn't stick to them.

Like Trump sides with countries not named America

versus Obama wore a tan suit.

You know, stuff like that, that just seems like we're playing two different games.

You know, you're the only military veteran in this.

But it seems like America cares less about that than they used to.

You'd be the first one with military service to be elected since the first President Bush.

Sorry, I should praise the question.

And I think that's the

experience that I think is going to be.

Yeah, I mean,

look, I mean, here you got a president, right, who will thump his chest, throw himself a military parade, and then turns his back on the troops.

I mean, the latest was minimizing traumatic brain injury.

If you know anything about what has happened to troops in the post-9-11 wars, you know that one thing I can tell you about traumatic brain injury is it can be a lot more serious than bone spurs.

Yeah,

that's why I honestly think you would do very well in a debate with Donald Trump.

I do.

But,

all right, I know you got to go.

I'm going to ask you one last question, and I know I nag people about this, and maybe they're tired of it, but I laid it out last week in a way I've never laid it out before, but all down the line.

I don't think if Trump loses, he's going to concede.

Scenario, you win.

You are president-elect Pete.

We're still calling you Pete.

And

you win, but Trump says there are irregularities and he can't give up the office because it's a deep state hoax.

What do you do?

Well, it's going to be a little awkward when Chasson and I are moving into the White House, but at the end of the day, there's only one president.

Yeah.

Hey,

if that was really the last question, then I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask everybody watching who supports this campaign to go to PeteForamerica.com and send in five or ten bucks.

Actually, this is HBO, so feel free to do 100 or 1,000.

All right, thank you.

I know you got to go.

I appreciate your time.

I'm rooting for you.

I'm a big fan.

Mayor Pete, everybody.

Thanks a lot.

All right, let's tweet our panel.

All right, he is a Republican strategist and author of the number one bestseller, Running Against the Devil, a plot to save America from Trump and Democrats from themselves.

Rick Wilson's over here.

Rick,

welcome back, as always.

He is the former Democratic mayor of New Orleans.

Did I say that right?

Right.

And founder of the Epluribus Unim Initiative, Mitch Landrew.

Great to see you.

And she is a former U.S.

Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor who flipped my home state of New Jersey's 11th in 2018.

Representative Mikey Sherrill, great to have you here.

Good job on that.

All right, don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show.

On YouTube, okay, I'm going to try not to cry during the show because we lost democracy this week.

I feel like I'm standing over a casket and thinking,

I should have been nicer when it was alive.

And I feel like whatever we're going to talk about tonight in a way is almost moot.

We're going to talk about politics in Iowa and who's going to win.

And I feel like we're actually talking about a world that doesn't exist anymore.

We're in a post-democracy world.

There's a different paradigm.

You know, it's one thing we always knew Trump was corrupt, but this week we found out the Senate.

The whole Senate's innovative.

You know,

countries that become dictatorships, they still have a Senate.

Rome had a Senate.

Russia has a Duma, a parliament.

They're there.

It looks the same, but it's not the same.

So my question is to this panel, where are we in two years?

Two years.

Are we have one year of a new president?

In two years, we're going to have,

unless the Democrats defy expectations and do a bunch of things we're going to have an unconstrained president.

We're going to have basically

one and a half branches of government, which will be a super powerful executive branch, and it'll be a Senate that is basically completely compliant with the White House.

I mean, what you saw this week?

I think that is the half-

Actually, I think what we're looking at here is the start of how we're taking back our democracy.

I think intuitively.

Oh, you cockeyed optimism.

No,

I do.

I really think that the American people have had enough.

We had 70% of the population that wanted to see witnesses.

This is too far.

It's a bridge too far.

And I think we're seeing people start to realize that

the House Republicans, the Senate Republicans have been so co-opted by this president.

And the American people know this is dangerous.

This is not why we had a revolution so we could have this unitary executive.

But does it matter if one party, I don't think the Republicans anymore believe in democracy.

Well, I thought when

Mitch, when

Merrick Garland

didn't get his hearing, I thought, oh, well,

they can't subvert democracy more than that.

And Mitch McConnell said, hold my beer.

Right.

Well, I think today, but today, though, today we really ought to stop because today was a...

was a monumental day, a very bad one for the history of our country.

And the Senate basically gave the finger to the country and basically did not do that duty.

And now it's up to the people of the country to say, we are the only ones that can stop this.

I disagree with, I think we're going to win in November, but you have to go vote.

And if you go vote and vote in substantial enough numbers so that they can't take it away from you by cheating, we will take back.

And they do.

But look at the midterms.

I mean, I had 20% of registered Republicans voting for me because people know this is wrong.

And I'm in a Trump district.

I'm just saying I don't know if voting matters.

I don't trust...

the returns with Russia and hacking and all that.

I have to say, it affects how I might vote.

I've been going back and forth about this.

I mean, we all do to a degree.

Do we want the progressive?

I like Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, but I feel mostly or have said that, you know, somebody like Peter, Amy Klombuchar, could win more easily.

But I tell you why Bernie Sanders is attractive to me now, because he's the only Democrat who, like Trump, has an army.

Who, when it gets to this other level, he's got a bunch of badass motherfuckers who will get in the streets.

Well, you haven't met the suburban women in my district.

The suburban women are the suburban women in my district are ready.

Are they packing?

Not New Jersey.

They're not packing in New Jersey.

Trump's people are.

I quoted it last week.

He said, we have the rough people.

And he mentioned the police, the military, and the bikers.

And the bikers.

Can your suburban women go up against the bikers?

Well, I do have my veterans,

and there's a biker club of my veterans, so I think they can take them.

They can take them.

Can I read you what Trump said in Iowa?

He gave a rally last night.

He said, you have no choice.

You have to vote for me.

He says this all the time.

What Democrats would think about why that resonates with people.

Otherwise, everything you've built your entire life will be gone.

And, you know, when you watch liberal media, as I do mostly, you hear he's an existential threat.

And I'm always trying to tell the liberals, but they think the same.

This means we're at this place where we both think the other side is an existential threat.

That is not a good place to be hit by the bread.

How do we draw it back from you're existential?

I'm existential.

It is an existential threat in a lot of ways in reality with Trump.

I think we are, I mean, we, I'm hopeful we're going to have a different outcome in 2020.

But I kind of feel like we got that, you know, the famous question when Franklin was asked at the Constitutional Convention.

what have you created?

And he said, a republic if you can keep it.

I think we know the answer to that if we don't do everything right this year.

But that question of how do you get back from being a, you know, let's get back to arguing about marginal tax rates.

That'd be lovely.

But right now,

we've got a guy like Bill Barr who is going to bend the Justice Department and suborn it to use it as a political weapon against Trump's opponents.

You've got a White House that is unbounded and uncontrolled.

And this week, they were told, hey, you've been criming all this time.

Go do more.

And no criminal on earth who doesn't get caught and punished stops

especially him and the only way that you're going to fix it is by throwing him out of office so the mission for everybody has to be to beat Trump and you can't govern if you don't win so we've got to find the candidate who is best suited to win again and then we've got to go do it I think we're talking about the last paradigm okay

so why did Bernie

outlast Warren It looked a couple of months ago like I mean that was the narrative that I bought into and it seemed like it was playing out on the ground that they're two very similar similar the far-left candidates but Bernie was kind of old news he ran last time Elizabeth Warren was the new version people were and then it all it sure did went around and maybe it says something about sometimes it's good to have a long campaign people saw Bernie's always the same guy Elizabeth Warren who I've always liked but

she kind of like did some stuff I didn't like and today she she came out listen to this she wants her secretary of education to be vetted by a high school student.

I'm not kidding.

She said, a young trans person, I believe in high school, I'm going to have a Secretary of Education that this young trans person interviews on my behalf, and only if this person believes our Secretary of Education nominee is absolutely committed.

Now, Obama said people just don't want crazy stuff.

Is this not crazy stuff?

is she running for president of Berkeley?

There's a fundamental rule in politics that Republicans have used for a long, long time.

Don't run on boutique issues in a Walmart nation.

Man, I never heard that.

That rule of thumb is exactly what that's about.

You know what?

It doesn't,

to leave trans rights and trans acceptance in another column here.

That is something that is so narrowly focused.

How does that help her win voters in the upper Midwest, in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania?

I couldn't agree more.

I have not heard that.

It's too narrow game.

I love it, but I mean, when we won, we won because we were talking about the things that keep people up at night.

The last thing you think of, if you're a single mom, is, you know, how am I going to pay for my kids' health care?

Or how am I going to make sure that I can pay for my rent?

And what is it going to take to succeed in this economy?

And that's what you run on.

That's what you run on.

And see, I always worry when this stuff happens.

I always say there's only two teams now.

Everything that happens on the left goes into the bluepin.

You're the party of this bullshit.

You might be asked about this.

Elizabeth Warren, what if she's the candidate?

What do you think, Congresswoman, about...

Letting a high school student, forget the transgender part, a high school student have veto power over the cabinet.

Good idea?

I mean,

that puts you in a tough spot, right?

I have four kids, so

that idea puts me in a real tough spot.

Okay.

Well, okay, so I just think Democrats are too often bad at politics.

Mike Bloomberg is going to run an ad on the Super Bowl.

I think he's spending $11 million on it.

It's an anti-gun ad.

Oh, the Super Bowl.

That's a good demo.

Exactly what I thought.

A bunch of wings-eating, beer-drinking guys, and you're going to come out there and say, let me introduce myself.

I want to take your guns right after the truck commercial.

Brilliant.

Look,

Mike Bloomberg has a gigantic Mount Everest-sized pile of money.

He's burning through it at a good clip.

But that's where your fundamental political judgment is somebody who's run in a bubble in a hothouse in Manhattan and doesn't understand that there's a big country out there that is very, very different.

And we still have

Democrats very frequently have this top-down ideological thing, and they think, oh, what works in Berkeley will work in Dubuque.

And it doesn't translate that way.

It doesn't translate, but he's spending money in Dubuque.

I mean, he is building an organization across the country.

And doing well.

There may be an upside to the organizational stuff he's doing come the general.

Well,

he's spending money in states that nobody's in right now, which is going to be interesting to see how that plays out after Super Tuesday.

I think folks are saying it's not going to work, but if he's out there spending money, getting to be known, talking about issues that supposedly people care.

So we'll see because this is the first time anybody's ever tried this.

So we don't have to go to the bottom.

It's going to work for somebody.

Maybe he won't be at the top of the ticket, but I mean, he is building this.

We got to money ball this one.

Yeah.

Remember money ball?

Yep.

No bunting.

No bunting.

No stealing.

They're giving them an out.

I feel like in this race, don't talk about the environment.

Anybody who cares about the environment is already voting for the Democrat.

There's not any overlap on that issue.

It's either it's a hoax or I think it's an emergency.

That's all there is.

Don't talk about it.

Policy is a problem.

It's just.

What?

Policy is a trap.

Policy.

You put out a 650-page health care plan, you know what happens?

A guy like me working for Trump will go and find 10 nerds to go through it and find 10 things that scare the crap out of suburban voters.

They're going to take away your kids' health care.

They're going to take away your union health care plan.

And all of a sudden, Medicare for All sounds like something out of the black lagoon.

It's terrifying.

Not all policy is a trap.

Like, what if the Democrats ran on?

But you should have policy.

Just don't.

Raising the minimum wage,

health care, legalized pot.

I think they would win the election going away.

Okay,

full disclosure, Jersey's raised the minimum wage.

We voted to raise the minimum wage.

I'm for it.

But nobody, nobody's going to be able to do it.

What is your minimum wage in New Jersey?

We're slowly getting it up to 15.

Still not enough to live.

Well, this is the thing.

Yeah, nobody thinks to themselves, gosh, one day if I work hard, I can get a minimum wage job and I'm going to be set, right?

That's not speaking to the middle class, I don't think.

And the other people don't count?

The people below the middle class?

But the people below the middle class want to be the middle class.

So the people below the middle class also say, no, minimum wage is a good thing.

But

they want to eat.

They want to do it.

They want to eat.

But that's not what's going to move hearts and minds of America because what everybody wants is a good, secure, middle-class job with benefits, right?

So you don't say, oh, you can have minimum wage and I don't know how you're going to pay for health care.

I don't know how you're going to retire.

I don't know how you're going to take paternity leave if anybody gets sick.

Didn't FDR say people don't eat in the long run?

They eat every day?

The thing about the election, though, Bill, is every re-election campaign is a referendum on the incumbent.

This is a binary choice in this election.

It's either you want four more years of Donald Trump or something else.

Wherever the numbers lead you for the Democratic campaign, wherever the polling leads you, And you've got to go there.

And that, making this a referendum on Trump on cruelty and corruption and these things that are easily understood.

And I say this a lot.

Barack Obama's policy fit on a poster.

It was hope and change.

Donald Trump's policy fit on a trucker hat.

Right.

It was, you know, fuck y'all.

And so

this idea that you have to go out and articulate policy when you've got a contrast to make for a referendum against Trump is But don't you think it's going to happen in the general election?

I mean, these candidates are competing with each other to become the nominee.

They have to distinguish themselves somehow.

You wouldn't expect them to get in a room and say, we're all going to go out there and say the same thing.

And that's going to, it's going to start winnowing out.

I mean, we're on the game now.

It's going to start on Monday.

And by March 2nd, there's going to be some clarity.

I have to move on.

Let's talk about the Grammys.

That's why they call me the king of blends.

The Grammys were Sunday, and what the fuck are we doing?

Okay.

It's funny, though.

So, you know, I always noticed that they have less and less categories every year because the ones that are televised are not nearly the whole shebang.

Best immersive audio album never gets on TV, but they give the Grammy

choral performance, best chamber music.

See?

So we have found some other

more specific Grammy category.

Would you like to hear this bit?

Okay, let's just...

For example, there's favorite botched lyric by your mom trying to sing along to Lizzo.

That's a category now.

I might win that one.

Best song a hipster says you have to have on vinyl.

Best gunshot on a rap and or country album.

Best Christmas album by a Jew.

Loudest performance by a mariacha band when you're just trying to have a conversation.

Best classic rock performance by a Scorsese movie while someone gets their head kicked in.

best rock song used by a Republican politician after the artist asked them to stop

and best CD you bought from a guy on Hollywood Boulevard because you didn't want to get stabbed okay

he is a sociology professor at Georgetown and his latest book Jay-Z made it america is out now our friend Michael Eric Dyson is over here

Hello.

All right.

Okay.

What topic would you like to talk about first?

This man who stands up every morning to excrete the feces of his moral depravity into a nation he's turned into his psychic commode.

That's what I want to talk about.

Donald Trump.

Oh, oh, okay.

Other than that, but wait, that's the elephant in the room.

You're wearing Kobe's jersey there, and I know you were great friends with him.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

It must be devastating as it is for everybody.

It is extremely devastating.

I went down to the memorial, that makeshift memorial today, a kind of living, breathing mausoleum on the one hand, but people's love for him was extraordinary.

He was an extraordinary human being, a great, great basketball player.

I wrote the cover story for Slam magazine when he retired, saying he was the best.

And the thing about him that I think is so remarkable, this is the stuff he did behind the scenes.

So the activist Sean King called me up and said, a young man who had been shot to death by the police, his brother was in the car, loved, the brother who survived, loved Kobe Bryant.

He called me up.

I called Kobe.

He sent him a bunch of stuff and called him.

A young woman from Israel contacted me and said, I know you're friends with him.

My brother has cancer and he's a huge Kobe fan.

So I called Kobe.

All they wanted was a little video made on his phone to send to him.

Kobe went to the studio and made a professional video and sent to this young man.

That's the kind of stuff that was representative of him as well.

So

maybe he is your next book.

I mean, you have written a lot of great biographies.

You did Martin Luther King, you did Malcolm X, you did Marvin Gaye.

Right, right.

My era.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt I loved that.

Oh, one of my, I mean, Marvin.

I mean,

the voice.

Underrated.

And he's a huge star,

even in passing, but still underrated.

Marvin Gaye is in my pantheon.

Yeah, yeah.

He could do that.

You did a book about Tupac.

I did a book about Tupac.

You did a book called Is Bill Cosby Right?

Right.

I did.

But not about

drugging women.

No, no.

No, no, no.

No, I said it was wrong.

I was saying it was wrong.

I said it was wrong.

And I had three pages.

Look, this was in, what, 2006?

Yes.

And before Woke was woke.

Right.

And like, the people, and I'm holding Bill Cosby to account.

And

I was talking three or four pages about the drugging of women and a lot of black people get mad at me.

Why are you trying to take a brother down?

I said, no, he drugged us before he drugged those women.

No, you were ahead of that.

So now the book is about Jay-Z.

Why did you pick him?

Well, he turned 50 this year, you know, last year.

Is that right?

He turned 50 years old.

Jay-Z is 50.

30 years in the game.

And hip-hop is about 40 years in terms of above ground.

So I wanted to talk about this tremendous figure, a guy who is rhetorically fluid, verbally gifted, but also commands the attention of the world.

And I say in the book, he's like Robert Frost with a Brooklyn accent, Rita Dove with a Jesus piece.

And people say, well, how dare you compare him?

I mean, if you listen to his lyrics, the simplicity of them are powerful.

Who says that?

Bill O'Reilly?

Oh, yeah.

I mean,

no, there's a lot of people.

How dare you compare a rapper with Robert Frost?

Whose witch these are, I think I know his house is in the village, though.

Well, Jay-Z has some lyrics too that are, and he's got a Robert Frost never had to rhyme.

Robert Frost isn't even even good oh that's that's like one of those grandfathered in what what two roads diverge in the yellow wood and I took the one let's travel by and that has made all the difference whose woods these are I think I know his house is in the village of he was cold he was cold

he was cold

but Jay

remember stopping by a woods on a snowy evening what is that is that the one we all remember from schools are lovely parking deep but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep

some say the world will end in fire some soon.

Anyway, yeah.

I believe we need what they call a fat beat.

Oh, Rick.

All right.

So I read an op-ed Jay-Z wrote about a year and a half ago about Meek Mill and probation, and it really opened my eyes to this issue.

I didn't realize probation and bail.

Yeah, bail.

70% of people in jail, get this in America, this is from the nation, haven't been convicted of a crime.

70%.

I saw when Manafort went to jail, he made $10 million bail.

He made it.

Oh, yeah.

So if you got $10 million,

laying around, you're good.

The growth in our jail population over the past 30 years is due to the attention of people not yet convicted.

And one reason is he was saying Meek Milk committed a crime when he was 19, did his time,

still being stalked

by the probation.

He popped a wheelie during

the video.

And that was like a probation violation.

And they put him back in the slammer.

And as Jay points out in that op-ed in the New York Times,

the charges are dismissed and so on, but the judge had the discretion to still go after him.

And then when you talk about Bail, Jay-Z made a great documentary on Khalif Browder, a young man in New York, charged with a crime.

He didn't have the money to cash Bail out, so he goes to Rikers for three years.

And then he's abused by both fellow prisoners and by

the law enforcement agencies there.

He gets out and he eventually kills himself because he couldn't deal with it.

I mean, that's the consequence of some of our untoward policies that Jay-Z has used his brilliance to illuminate as well.

Okay, so I want to ask you about this book, American Dirt, and then everybody else.

But American Dirt, if you're not following it, it's a book that was highly touted.

Oprah loved it, told her folks to get it.

What, you know, like that?

Well, let me tell them what it is, if they don't know.

It's a book about a migrant woman and her son who are chased by drug dealers and getting their way into America.

And people seem to love it until they found out that the lady who wrote it was three-quarters white.

What?

Well, that's, I don't think that's, I mean, if that would be the reason, that's

totally false.

Okay, well,

I read articles and articles about it, and I kept thinking, where is the reason you're hating this?

I can't, you're not telling me why it's bad.

And there are

Andre Cisneros, a very well-known Mexican-immigrant author, said, it's going to be for an audience who maybe is undecided about issues at the border.

The story is going to enter like a Trojan horse and change minds.

Yeah.

Well, it is a Trojan horse, but what it let out wasn't changing of minds.

I think here's the point.

Look, I don't want anybody telling me what I can and cannot write about.

I write about Jacques Derrida, a French social theorist, a critical theorist.

I write about Foucault.

I write about, you know, Husserl.

I write about German people.

I want to be able to do that as an African-American.

I need to read some of these books because I don't know who you are.

There's some real smart people who are doing great things.

But check this out.

The thing is, it's not that she's white and therefore she's writing about it.

She's not writing well about it.

She's not writing with dexterity and skill.

Why are so many people love it?

Why did Oprah love it?

Oprah's wrong.

You know what?

Oh, that couldn't be.

That could not be.

Are we off TV?

Yeah.

Well, even Oprah has said this.

Oprah said, I was so amazed by the response.

I want to have the author sit down with those who object to it.

Let me finish my point here.

Walter Laurie.

No, what I'm saying.

Walter Laurie wrote a book under the volcano, right?

Yeah.

And that was a book by a British guy.

No, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Duh.

Okay.

I read it right after Foucault.

Two minutes.

Did you read it in English?

I didn't get the syllabus, all right?

Check this out.

I've been under nucleosis for like two months.

I couldn't get to all of it.

He's a British dude who grew up near Liverpool, and he wrote a brilliant book about Mexico.

David Blight has written a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography for Frederick Douglass.

You read this book and it shit.

That's your point.

I'm just asking.

Let me say it's representative of the Trump era.

And this is what I mean by this.

It's not that because she's white, therefore she can't write it.

It's the fact that there are so many people.

who may be Mexican and other ethnicities who are writing brilliant stuff who can't get published.

And this white woman, by virtue of her set of skills and her privilege, is able to write about some stuff not as well as others are able to do.

So it's not that

it's not for the people

in the bookstore to decide.

If you Google,

that's where whiteness come into play.

Markets.

Dogs won't eat bad dog food.

But I think the people.

Who's tasting that food?

They eat alcohol food.

People won't go from bad child.

But who's the gatekeeper?

Who's determining which books get to market?

And I worry because I think when we look at artists, we want them to imagine themselves as someone different.

We want to cross boundaries because of that.

And I worry that all of this directed at this author is going to make some people pause before they try to reach, before they try to take a different thing.

But I think where I'm in agreement is this idea that you know these other authors aren't getting published.

Well, see, but that's critical, though.

It's the fact is that she can get published readily.

If you look at, look, I've been publishing books since 1993.

It's an extremely white field.

People of color don't have the same kind of access, so it's not so much the fact that

she's 21.

So, right, right.

It's of 10 years trying to get in the door.

I understand that, but as a white woman, I'm saying using her imagination is beautiful.

And that's why I gave the example of a David Blight or Eric Foner who writes about Reconstruction.

We ain't mad at white folk with competence who write about intelligently black folk.

We mad at folk who use their white privilege to say some stuff that's shitty, shoddy, and shabby.

I don't know if I put it on the review there, the blurb, shitty, shoddy, and shabby, Michael Eric Dyson.

And that's what I meant by particularly Trump.

And I don't want to diss this author.

I mean, here's a guy who is addicted to vulgar mediocrity and a kind of malignant ignorance.

And all you have to do is show up and say some stuff and make people believe it's true.

I'm saying do the work for it.

If we talk about Kobe Bryant, he was a genius who worked hard.

I'm saying bring your literary skills to bear.

We loved, we loved Eminem.

We didn't love vanilla ice.

Right?

Right.

Right?

So I'm saying being white is not the right thing.

I haven't read the book.

Some people like it.

Oprah, you don't.

I'm just saying.

We'll see.

Right.

Nobody else on this?

Okay.

I want to ask about what the Democrats should do next because I saw Lev Parnas was in the news today, and he was basically saying, kind of like John Bolton, you know, the Republicans are saying, well, case closed, you know, we don't need any more evidence.

And Bolton's like, wait, no.

We don't have Trump saying directly.

And Bolton's like, yes, that's exactly what I would testify.

There are no eyewitnesses except for me.

Right.

And by the way, you know, liberals who think there's always going to be a Republican who's going to save them, it's going to be John Bolton now.

And before that, it was Robert Mueller.

And it never happened.

Cavalry is not coming.

Well,

you got to show up.

Yeah, but it's astonishing to me.

I mean, again, if we're going to talk about the different perspectives that can be offered for an author, Donald Trump is the fleshly thesaurus of what black people have been trying to warn America about for 400 years.

What did we say?

White supremacy is arrogant, it is narcissistic, it is self-involved, and guess what?

It destroys white people too.

Martin Luther King Jr.

is in jail in Birmingham and his white jailer comes up to him and says, you know what?

You're wrong with that desegregation stuff.

And King said, no, I'm I'm not.

And then King asked him, how much money do you make?

And when he told him, he said, well, hell, you need to be out here marching with us.

And the white man, a light bulb goes off.

So the point is that our democracy has been given over to such vicious mediocrity.

When you told black people, you got to be twice as sharp.

You got to be sharp.

You got to tell women, you got to be on your game.

You got to tell everybody else you're on your game.

This, I don't want to hear anybody else come up to me complaining about affirmative action or black people or brown people getting a job when you got the most mediocre white man in the history of America running this nation in the complicity of dislike.

And the complicity of the slum.

I love the way all the white people cheer for themselves going torn out of work.

Yes, I'm an asshole.

I should be not having this job.

Anyway, the question I was about to ask is, Lev, you know, Lev, little Lev, Lev, Lev,

sounds like Trump, you know, I thought he would have an accent, Lev.

Right?

Trump sounds like what he should sound.

Anyway, right.

So he says he has all the texts, and like he has, he could in detail give him

should even after he is acquitted, you can still have hearings.

That's what the Republicans did with Benghazi.

Remember?

Hillary went in, and then they kept having Benghazi hearings, even though there was nothing to begin with.

There's a mountain of evidence.

Should they keep it going even after

absolutely

Lev coming with the receipts?

Receipts.

After this thing.

Lev has receipts.

Lev coming with the receipts.

Literally.

This horrible.

All of these recordings and these emails, these WhatsApp messages, text messages, and it's all this collection.

It's like Trump's like a comet flying through,

this comet flying through with all these weird-ass guys around him.

And Rudy, and you know, that Steve Jobs thing about A's hire B's and B's hire C's?

Well, Trump hires Rudy and Rudy hires these Ukrainian skells and all these weirdos.

And all these people, all of these people

have a story to tell.

And if they don't tell it,

they're going to be subpoenaed to tell it.

But the question is, what is the rest?

But the fact is, unless there's something severely interesting and progressive happens, he's going to get re-elected.

So the American voter it, right, the American voter it is out here re-electing this guy who's doing manifest wrong.

And by the way, not helping poor and working class white people.

And the point you made earlier is so important.

Nobody is concerned about the poor and working class people in this country.

Middle class is what you get to after the fact.

But those who are stuck at the bottom have nobody to advocate for them.

And this guy is not the friend of poor white people.

That's why he's the master con artist.

Well,

he's the master whistlers.

I wrote about that.

New rules, everybody, time for new rules.

Okay.

New rules, the next time evangelical leaders lay hands on Trump to pray, he has to try and look a little less like he's thinking about getting blown.

Neural, people who say Iowa shouldn't get the first primary because it's not representative of America have to visit the Iowa State Fair and see the sculpture of a cow made of butter.

Is there anything more representative of America than a cow made of butter?

No.

No, there isn't.

And that's why Iowa gets to go first.

Neurol, someone must explain what emoji I should use when I generally want to say eggplant.

I'm just trying to order vegetables locally and now some farmer is texting me about tossing a salad.

Neural, since Tucker Carlson keeps insisting that immigrants make America dirtier, someone has to show him this picture of all the crap left after the recent Trump rally in New Jersey.

For a bunch of red-blooded patriots making America great again, there sure is a lot of white trash.

New roll, the Tennessee man arrested for smoking marijuana while in court

for smoking marijuana

must consider the fact that maybe pot is causing him to make unwise choices.

Good place to smoke weed in bed.

Bad place in cuffs.

And finally, new world Democrats must stop talking about playing as dirty as the Republicans and actually start doing it.

Ever since Democrats lost the 2016 election, there's been a backlash to the when they go low, we go high approach.

When they go low, we got to do whatever we have to do.

When they go low, we go high.

I think the Democrats have to go a little lower now.

When they go low, we kick them.

Yeah, it's a nice applause line, but they never say what exactly it is we should do.

Just we got to fight dirty.

Okay, but how?

Typical Democrats bringing a notion to a gunfight.

Republicans always have dirty tricksters on their payroll, like Igor and Lev,

Roger Stone, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Giuliani.

Well, we're going to need some reptilian scumbags of our own.

Good Democrats who are willing to stand up and do the wrong thing.

And I know just the guy you used to love him, Michael Avenatti, come on down.

Michael, in the brief time we've come to know you, it turns out that you are a dirty, filthy, amoral, unscrupulous, cheating, lying, stealing, low-life lawyer motherfucker, and your party needs you.

But he's in prison, so let me get the ball rolling.

First off, let's target Trump's brain.

That's an old dirty trick of theirs.

In 2014, Karl Rove suggested Hillary might have suffered a traumatic head injury from a fall, and she had to go on ABC News and assure Diane Sawyer that her brain still worked.

She's been dying in the conservative-run tabloids for years.

She stumbled once getting into a car, and Fox News started running her obituary.

Of course, Hillary was and is fine.

Meanwhile, Trump is a neurological mess.

But the Democrats are too scared to make an issue of it when actually it would cut together really well as a campaign ad.

And let me begin by wishing you a beautiful look.

There's one thing people who've known Donald Trump for a long time all say.

He's not the same person he was.

And then they announced there was no buys now.

Democrats decided to shield and shelter criminal.

Look, look.

The worry that I have is that maybe he's having small strokes.

Sometimes he simply can't speak.

An anomalous...

Really an anomalous.

What must be going on in his mind?

I hope they now go and take a look at the oranges, the oranges of the

investigation.

The oranges, how it started.

No one wishes ill health on the president, but a country needs a leader to be there.

God bless the United States.

A leader who's all there.

As Melania often says to Donald, that wasn't so hard.

Make that go viral, would you?

Because the Democrats would really be running that for real.

Next thing we have to do is give Trump a taste of his own medicine.

At the second debate with Hillary in 2016, he went there and put three of Bill Clinton's sex accusers in the audience.

Trump has 25 accusers.

They could fill the entire gallery at the debates, all with matching pussy hats.

And Stormy Daniels, who famously said Trump's penis was short with a giant head, a mushroom dick, if you will.

Well, why can't she be sitting right in front picking mushrooms off of a pizza?

Donald Trump is not a hard man to drive crazy.

The state of the union coming up on Tuesday, supposed to be his big victory lap.

Okay, so you know he's going to go full crackhead and start

gloating and lying his ass off.

That would be a good time to remember Republicans set this precedent.

The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

They can say, you lie to Obama.

We can't yell, you lie, at the guy who lies like raccoons eat trash.

Not only should the Democrats in the hall shout it out, everybody at home should too.

Let's practice it now.

I'll be Trump at the State of the Union.

The The Democrats tried to impeach me over a perfect call.

I was the person who saved pre-existing conditions.

I only watch real time accidentally.

This 2020 election is destined to be the dirtiest, rat-fuckingest one ever, especially when Republicans start using footage like this.

President Trump is a total and complete dipship.

Okay, that would be damning, but of course he never said it.

That's what's called a deep fake.

Obama's face and voice manipulated digitally to make it look like he's speaking words that in reality never came out of his mouth.

It's the future of sleazy American political advertising.

So let's get in on it now.

And I know,

I know just what our first deep fake video should be.

The P-Tape.

Remember the P-tape?

The infamous recording of Trump being entertained by two urinating hookers in Moscow?

Well, we found it.

Would you like to see it?

Roll him.

Thank you, love.

Now, go get rid of that ambassador like I told you.

Okay, girls, you know why you're here.

Make it rain.

Come on, girls, walk in.

I'm Donald Trump, and I like everything covered in gold.

That's right, all over the Bible, like I told you.

You're welcome.

As always, feel free to repost, like, and subscribe.

All right, that's our show.

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